3 Miles An Hour

What is this?

One of your hot cake mix.

If you forget something you can't run down to the corner store and pick it up.

You want to leave it in here?

Yeah.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket though, half and half.

Just the puzzle, how you put it all together.

You got more huh?

It may not look like Smoke Elser has retired.

I like that idea.

But he has, after 50-years as an outfitter and a packer.

Well it's already smashed Mack picked up a bad loaf.

Smoke and his wife Thelma have a lifetime of knowledge to share.

Sandwich bags you're going to need in this one.

Now let's load.

3 here, 4 there.

You need to weigh your cots and know how much they weigh.

You need to weigh your stove and know how much it weighs.

Yeah these are plenty heavy.

[Breathing] "I hope this doesn't record all my heavy breathing.

Have I overwhelmed you now?

I've been overwhelmed for days [laughs].

Everyone is preparing for a backcountry trip to the Bob Marshall wilderness in western Montana.

Just don't go so fast that you're going to sling shot me out of there.

I mean it's a lot more of a science than people think.

5, 6, 7, how many mules we got?

Nice huh?

I want it lighter, and I want it easier to load.

Heading out on the trail, Smoke Elser wants to talk about more than how to pack for horses and mules.

I think Smoke is worried about the loss of the story of the Bob Marshall.

When he hangs up his boots we'll lose some of those stories.

Smoke knows the best place to tell stories of wilderness, is in the wilderness.

He and his friends will explore a small piece of this vast landscape.

Along the way, he'll share his story, from the challenges of starting his own business.

And I was not, not the easiest one to work for.

To his search for a role and relationship with the wilderness.

But as time went on, I, I guess I figured it out.

You have to protect this in order to keep enjoying it.

Smoke found a way to combine his love of people with his love of the outdoors.

I think Smoke saw himself as somebody who could introduce other people to wilderness.

Smoke Elser isn't sure how many more trips he gets to take, so he's going to enjoy this at his pace, and in the part of the country he loves.

And it's a place where a, where you can actually get back to your senses.

And you can really a, you can really live at 3-miles-an-hour.

That's the speed of a horse.

Production support for 3 Miles an Hour was provided by, the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends and values of importance to Montanans.

and by the Montana Office of Tourism.

What would you do, if you could no longer visit a place that you love?

No longer visit a place that inspired you.

No longer visit a place that shaped you.

I already miss it, every year I miss it.

Every year I miss the Danaher, I miss the south fork, I miss Young's Creek.

It's everything to him.

It's his home, it's his church, it's his spiritual well being is tied up with wilderness.

I think in the back of his mind, like a lot of us, I mean you just have to be a realist at some point in time and go, this could be my last trip, you just never know.

Hopefully not, but it could be.

Now Smoke is 77-years old.

He'd been talking about this type of trip for a while, no clients or guests, just friends in the backcountry.

The group is in the Bob Marshall wilderness.

It's actually three areas combined into 1.5 million acres in western Montana.

Bob Marshall was an early conservationist, forester and a voracious hiker.

He hiked vast stretches of the land that would later bear his name.

He saw a stunning diversity in this area, from the valley floors, to the high mountain lakes.

If there was one defining feature, this was it.

If there was one defining feature, this was it.

The Chinese Wall has an average height of one thousand feet, and stretches for more than 20-miles.

For Smoke Elser, the memories are more than just limestone walls; it's all the people he helped experience this geological wonder.

Back in the southern end of the Bob Marshall, Smoke and his friends are completing a 23-mile horseback ride to one of his favorite spots.

He's taking them into the Danaher Valley.

From Native Americans to would-be homesteaders, it was a popular place long before wilderness designation.

Mack, Connie, Richard and Dan have spent time in the backcountry and are eager to learn more.

That worked just right.

I don't know how long we're going to have that experience riding with us so I'm trying to learn as much as I can as quick as I can.

Dog gone it, I never can get that the first time.

Naturally.

There's the one.

Use the other end and hook it on the edge of it, just pull it down.

No the edge.

No the edge - that's the tip.

I definitely felt like a student.

It is super hard and was super hard for me not to jump in on everything.

Grab a hold of this end, and a wrap here, always leave a loop in it, get her done pull her tight.

No, you've got to pull this one, hard.

No, you can't push it!

There's a reason that he has his way of doing it and it's because it works.

O.K.

so pull and slide, O.K.

That's tight, let's get the scrim out.

That's a cool knot.

I still don't have that one perfected, in my mind in fact I fall asleep at night still thinking now how did he do that knot, it was so simple?

Do you have to bite your tongue sometimes?

Sure you do.

Because he can put up a kitchen fly faster than any person.

I have chest of drawers disease, that's when your chest falls into your drawers and every once in a while you've got to pull your drawers back up.

Bear probably came by and got it.

There we go perfect.

God this is beautiful.

Yeah this is a pretty nice place.

He's helping me not have to go through the trial and errors that he's had to go through.

Camp is officially here.

Can't beat it.

Can't beat it.

After a long day, everyone settled in, excited to explore more of the area tomorrow.

Three mile an hour, that's how we got here.

Damn, I love it here.

Do anything about my life, well this is it.

In 1955, Arnold Elser had never been out west.

The young Ohio boy was an Eagle Scout with a love for the outdoors.

He traveled to Montana with dreams of being a forest ranger.

He started down that path as a fire lookout, but he met two men who would change his life.

Out of the hills they came!

And geez here's a pack string and all kinds of stuff.

And a little short guy there that was in charge of everything that was Tom Edwards.

And he was running around there giving orders and getting things squared around, kinda like I did the other day.

And I went over and I said, uh, I introduced myself, and I said you know I'd like to have a job at the guest ranch.

I'd like to pack.

And he said, 'Well, Sonny.'

He said, 'I don't know about that.

Tom says "Jack I've got a new hand for you here, and I want you to help, help train him," and I looked him over and I thought, you know, I don't know, I don't know whether, I just don't know if he's going to make it or not.

At the time I was trying to do the cooking and the packing and I wasn't that good at the cooking, so I kind of started pushing Smoke in that direction a little more and more and he became a very good camp cook.

Well Tom showed me how to manti and how to tie the ropes right and how to put a knot in it, and then he had his, his nephew come up and was Howard Copenhaver, and Howard was a real horseman I mean he was really good.

And he showed me more tricks as we went along.

Every day was like going to college and starting at 6 o'clock in the morning and ending at dark.

Because I, I learned more things from those two men than uh, you can write in a book.

Arnold Elser was learning in one of the world's most beautiful classrooms.

He was learning more than just tying knots and throwing saddles.

Tom Edwards was a teacher by trade and his outgoing personality worked with all ages.

Tom loved to amuse the guests.

Around the campfire, Tom played the mandolin and sang and it left his apprentice wondering how he would entertain on future trips.

He told me that you don't necessarily have to play an instrument that you can maybe tell stories.

See Whiskey Ridge is named because, Tom Danaher after he got in here and got pretty well settled... At first we thought we could just hook on to the front of the log, but we pulled the whole front of the porch off, so that didn't work too good.

And he happened to call his horse Sea Biscuit, which he wasn't a Sea Biscuit but he was a nice horse, but he was a little hard to catch.

Tom and I went through the hills through the mountains, he related a lot of stories to me, uh I don't know whether they're all true but they make good stories for in the backcountry and sitting around the campfire.

As they logged more trips in the backcountry, Arnold Elser was honing his skills.

His mentor was happy with his progress, well except for one thing.

Fought forest fires back east and I got poison ivy real bad, ended up in the hospital.

All the students that I knew there they started calling me Smoke.

And then I come out to Montana that next spring and when I did that, Tom Edwards he says well he says Arnold, you we can't call you that, he said you know everybody around here has a Jack or a John or a Howard or a Fred a real simple name not like Arnold.

And he said we gotta call you something else.

And I said well, they were calling me Smoke back there That's it!

He said you're Smoke from now on.

There were bigger changes for Smoke.

He met Thelma, and one year later they were married.

They started a family and in 1964 Smoke graduated from college.

They had saved, borrowed and were ready to start their own outfitting business.

Scared to death, you bet, yeah absolutely.

I knew I wanted to be an outfitter.

And for me this was a big jump because I was not a horse person, I was not particularly an outdoor person.

I was not, I had not slept in a tent until I met Smoke.

They had two young daughters and barely made ends meet.

There were long hours, but just like his mentors, Smoke wanted to do more than just haul people and their stuff into the wilderness.

You know, when I visited our guests in, in New York, Chicago and, and Seattle, they tried to interpret Seattle to me.

And it-that's what was really interesting for me.

And so when they came to Montana and came for the wilderness our goal was to interpret what they were seeing.

He always wanted the guests to get something out of a trip besides fishing and hunting.

He wanted them to experience the quiet, um, the slowness of the pace.

He really provided more than just you're riding a horse through the woods.

He interpreted the woods for you.

And he knew what, what was in the woods.

And he could tell stories and he could identify plants and the grasses and the animals and so forth and so on.

So, a lot of people didn't do that in that day.

Hopefully it's become more so, because that's the true nature of wilderness is you're not there just to go pass through it, you're there to live it.

In the early days Smoke and Thelma had a brochure printed to advertise the business.

It turned out to be the only one they ever had made.

They began by charging 25-dollars a day for trips.

They relied on word-of-mouth and repeat business, which meant holding themselves to an exacting standard.

No detail was too small, even if it meant a shave or a haircut in the woods.

I started working with my dad and working in the business when I was in my early teens.

So my father, was, and is in many ways, can be a difficult person to work for, as an employee.

When I started to work for Smoke, I didn't have the hustle, that he needed to keep his business going at his standard, and he set a high but achievable good standard.

He ran it like a business and he expected his employees to treat it like a business as well, and accomplish the tasks that needed to be accomplished.

It was just pure adventure and he gave me an avenue to expend all the energy I could.

The good thing is you know when you get it right.

The bad thing is he can spot an error from about 200 yards.

And the most common thing I can remember is hearing my name or any of the other wranglers will say the same thing, hearing my name hollered across a meadow with, if you leave that rope like that you're going to kill that damn mule.

[laughs].

Yeah everybody got yelled at across the meadow, you're gonna kill that mule if you don't do x, y, z!

So yeah that was a [laughs] that was not unusual!

Yep, if you don't fix the loads and the ropes, you're going to kill those damn mules that's exactly right.

[laughs] That was his way of communicating.

Each mule has about 160-feet of rope on it.

You know what rope could he possible mean?

And you start going through a check list in your head.

Is it the manti-rope, the sling rope, the lead rope?

Mules are going to be running every which way and you're going to have tangled up horses and mules and they're going to be down and rolling over and everything else.

Jeff, I hollered at him many times and Robin too as a matter of fact.

Tammy I was a little less, she would holler back.

[laughs] You're gonna kill that damn mule.

After struggling through their first two years, Smoke and Thelma got their big break.

They were asked to lead a University of Montana fundraising trip called the Grizzly Riders.

It connected them to prominent business people, community leaders and a network of new customers.

The company's ability to handle all this work hinged on one person.

Smoke's successes were a great part due to Thelma.

Even though she played behind the scenes more than Smoke did.

He was the guy in front of the camera, where Thelma was back there backing him up.

She really ran the logistics, to the second.

And you really do have to have a business mind and be witty about it, you know if you don't have the whole package you can't make an outfitting business really truly come to fruition.

She's probably 75% of my business, easily, maybe more.

Thelma was really the unsung hero.

And she would have to, get the food ready for the next trip, she'd have to make the bookings for hotels and motels for the people coming in, she'd pick them up at the airport, she'd take them to the motel, and she'd have all the food in boxes and it would come up.

In one sense Smoke and I had it easy.

Because she not only did all of that, but she also did all of the booking.

She loved talking to guests and arranging a trip to fit what they wanted.

We hardly ever fought we really worked well together.

You know 52-years of being married but he's only been home maybe 26 out of those.

You got to look at it that way too so [laughs].

The business came with a cost.

Smoke went into the hills to lead the trips and Thelma stayed behind.

There was a family to raise and it wasn't easy.

And even with our kids, young kids, we geez I, it ended up that she had to raise the two daughters.

I was gone all the time.

But yeah it was difficult.

He was usually home, well maybe a week before Thanksgiving, he'd be out of hunting camp.

We all looked forward to that.

But it was also an adjustment, having him back in the house.

You know that was tremendously difficult, you know and it was definitely hard not to have a dad home.

But I also got a lot of gifts out of my childhood that a lot of kids don't get.

Of course the business had its perks for the kids.

A friend of the family gave a unique gift to the girls.

It was an ornery little pony.

Don't ever buy your kids ponies.

[laughs] At that time, they still moved their stock the old fashioned way, so Smoke didn't own a truck yet.

He had to get this present to where the kids were staying for the summer, and his idea involved his wife's car.

And I took the back seat out of the car, I wound down both windows in the back doors.

And led the pony in the back, head out one window, tail out the other, and we drove to Lubrecht.

[laughs] I did know that ponies didn't belong in cars.

[laughs] But I'll tell you the cars and trucks that passed us going the other direction, man I'd see the, they'd go by us and then you'd see the taillights come on, you know they were hitting the brakes they thought what is this?

[laughs] We had a pony in the backseat and the two little blonde girls sitting in the front going, we got a pony, see, like other people have groceries.

[laughs] That's right they were just tickled to death and, they kept feeding the, the pony they had a hand full of grass each of them they'd feed the pony a little bit and here he is right behind my neck - chomp, chomp, chomp - he's eating that grass, almost eating my hat!

No I didn't know he was going to do it, and up and give them the pony.

Fact is she wanted to know where the back seat was.

She said there better not be any mess in that car, and there wasn't, fortunately by golly the pony was good.

It had been five years since President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Wilderness Act.

The landmark legislation permanently protected some of the most natural and undisturbed places in America.

Everyone was still trying to figure out the potential consequences.

More Americans were heading outdoors, but they had to adjust to the new rules and regulations.

Nobody should be looking over my shoulder, nobody should be telling me how to do anything, because you know I really know how to do it.

What do you mean I shouldn't just dig a hole and bury my garbage or burn all this stuff, that might not be so good?

A lot of outfitters and a lot of people thought that boy this wilderness thing is going to put us out of business period.

However, Tom, and Howard both saw the handwriting on the wall to where the changes were going to happen no matter what you did.

The Wilderness Act created just as many conflicts as solutions in the beginning, and Smoke Elser and his new business were about to be in the middle of it all.

were about to be in the middle of it all.

It was a new day on the wilderness trip, with a chance to explore more of the valley.

That's Big Apex and that's Little Apex, this is the Danaher River, named after Tom Danaher who homesteaded in here.

While his name is on the map, not many people know old Tom Danaher's story.

The group headed to his homestead site that holds only scattered clues of a peopled history in the wilderness.

And the cabin itself sat right here, like this, and it was about 30-by-24 feet.

Now Danaher come into this country in the late 1800's as a trapper and a hunter and he explored this country pretty thoroughly.

But he thought this would make a great homestead.

Danaher knew the area well, he was a forest ranger there from 1898-1904.

He was also among a group of men trying to take advantage of a little known addition to the Homestead Act that allowed people to settle on National Forest Lands.

It gave us the opportunity to kind of see and feel the things that the Danaher family felt around the turn of the century.

That's the name of a reversible stove.

Isn't that center?

C-e-n-t-e-r, center.

How they laid out their cabin.

How they had their equipment scattered around.

You know the things, you can look at the field you can still see the fields, where they were grazing and cutting hay.

Danaher also had hopes that the railroad was coming and the area would develop into a town.

He convinced a few other families to move there, but they alleged it wasn't just the Homestead Act he was trying to take advantage of.

The first time I ever heard about Tom Danaher, I heard that he stole his land or at least half of his land from his partner because his partner could not read or write, so when all the deeds were set up, he left the partner's name off them.

The allegations against Danaher were never proven.

Meanwhile his name remained prominent in the valley.

Danaher is the only one to appear on the area's original 1905 survey map.

Later he would become the official name of a creek, a mountain and a valley.

Smoke took them on a short ride from the Danaher place to a spot no one in the group had seen.

They found evidence of where other families tried to make a go of it.

It actually looks like a doorway, almost and I wondeif Dan was right and that was kind of a root cellar or cold storage or something.

Could be.

And these trees weren't here?

No.

You think this was open?

Oh yeah, these trees, I don't think these trees are more than sixty years old, maybe seventy.

I didn't see any sign where they dug a well.

Did they go down to the creek every time for their water?

A lot of things like that you know, let's face it, life was tough for them.

You know one of the things that I enjoyed was just looking at the structure, some of the old logs that they had, you know those were hand hewn logs that they, obviously had to do themselves to put those cabins together.

And it was incredibly valuable and I really appreciated the opportunity to do that with somebody who knew where everything was at.

And I was just lucky I found it you know we come around the corner and was the right place.

But those people had to be really tough to build a homestead here and live.

But they couldn't have picked a prettier spot.

The railroad never came through those parts.

Danaher eventually proved up on his homestead site, but quickly sold the land, realizing his dream for a town had vanished.

Now more than 100-years after he walked away, the place remains almost unchanged.

the place remains almost unchanged.

The way it all played out, is that special place that he saw is going to be there indefinitely, for future generations to be able to go take a look at it, they'll be able to go out there and get that very special feeling that we talked about when you ride into the Danaher Valley and you see how beautiful it is.

So I think it's really important that we all remember what kind of history that it is and part of what's neat about it is the sense of exploring and finding, sometimes it feels like you're the first person that's ever been there.

And the Native Americans, you know the Salish in particular liked the Danaher especially, and when I first came in here in the late '50s, there were still fish drying racks that you could see out in the valley there.

When I brought in the elders of the Salish tribe to mark some of their historic sites, we actually cooked fish three or four days on the trail the way they used to do it with the stick and a campfire.

I tell you that's fascinating, that's a cool part of history.

that's a cool part of history.

You know protecting the resource while we're back there is extremely important and limiting your impacts back there and I know we take horses and mules and that makes it even more difficult to limit your impact with them.

For that reason we started to reduce the weight of our equipment so that we could reduce the number of stock we took in the hills.

The idea of trying to be lighter-on-the-land started a long list of small improvements that everyone contributed through the years; lighter tents, repackaged food to save space and weight.

It didn't take long for him to see a good idea, hear about a good idea, come up with his own good idea and then integrate that into the way he did the job around the camp.

Re-using Forest Service fire shelters to avoid sterilizing the ground with campfires, raising the stove up for the same reason, putting scrim down to protect the grass; little steps to help the next traveler feel like they were the first to arrive there.

I mean he believes this, it's not just something that he's doing, but he really believes this it is part of his value system.

it is part of his value system.

it is part of his value system.

It's hard for him back there, I mean you can tell.

Well we all get tired, but I don't think he's used to getting tired.

he's used to getting tired.

You don't sit on a horse for 50+ years and not have some knee problems or hip problems.

But at the same time we had some 27-mile days last year that he did just fine on.

Every once in a while I just lift up my head, golly look at that scenery, my gosh, and the pain in the knees doesn't even exist.

That was a great experience as every trip that I've taken, they've all been a great experience.

And for that reason they keep me young.

Maybe not younger in my knees, but younger in my head, and as long as I can think young, by golly, I think I'm going to keep right on doing it.

Tess, whoa, well come here, come on over here.

Tess, whoa, well come here, come on over here.

Hey Tess, what do you say?

Hey Tess, what do you say?

Hey Tess, what do you say?

You know when this all first started this wasn't wilderness, this was just home to the Native Americans, it was home to the settlers that came out here, it was just the way it was and it was just the normal way of life.

And I think we've gotten away from that in this country a little bit and I think it really refreshes people's souls and I think it has the opportunity to keep them grounded in the decisions and where we go in the future.

You know the last three generations of people in the world have virtually made all of the land management decisions everywhere, And for that reason I think future generations ght to have the opportunity to make land management decisions on land that has never been touched.

I would like to see land set aside for future generations because I think they're smarter, a lot smarter than we were, because we damaged a lot of land that we shouldn't have.

As the 1960's ended, the damage was becoming more apparent.

The conflicts were scattered all across America's public lands.

In western Montana, efforts were under way to preserve more wild areas.

To the south, the first ever citizen initiated wilderness was already taking shape.

Smoke and Thelma were on the record supporting the proposed Scapegoat Wilderness.

To the north, one of the last undeveloped major river drainages in the United States existed between Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall.

Concern was growing over how to manage the area.

Should it be managed for wildness?

Or managed for timber?

Forests today are not managed anything like they were back in the '60s.

The emphasis, if you go back into the, late '50s and 60's, was timber and getting the wood out for the development of homes and so forth.

Smoke rode right into the conflict on a fishing trip in 1969.

Among the group was Lloyd Schermer, publisher of western Montana's largest newspaper.

They had heard rumors about roads being cut into this wild and beautiful place.

As we got down toward the north border of the Bob, there's a bulldozer in there pushing dirt and trees.

Lo and behold right on the trail we run into a bulldozer that is cutting a road into, towards Lodgepole Creek, uh, and uh, Lloyd couldn't hardly believe it.

And I said to Smoke, what is, what are they doing in here?

There's nothing that will make you any madder than you're telling your guests boy we're in a real pristine area and all of a sudden you run into a bulldozer.

It just so happened the Forest Service was about to make a presentation to a group Smoke was packing into the wilderness.

He got an idea to bring along a reporter.

At the first pay phone, Lloyd called his newspaper and assigned Dale Burk to the story.

And my assignment simply was, and he told me that I have just learned that the Forest Service is going to present a program to the Grizzly Riders tomorrow, and I want you to go in undercover working as a packer for Smoke Elser and I want you to cover the story when they make that presentation.

And yeah I was a little concerned, as a matter of fact a couple of the Forest Rangers asked me questions later about what, what was the deal there?

And I said well heck he was a wrangler.

After being a good wrangler and helping the guests catch some fish, Dale Burk took pictures and notes of the Forest Service presentation.

He wrote a series of newspaper articles detailing the roads and raising questions about the area's future.

The Forest Service insisted they were not trying to hide anything, but Dale knew there had to be planning maps.

When they made their presentation that we've looked at this area and studied and stuff so, my job I ask them for the maps.

We don't have the maps, what do you mean the maps don't exist.

Two days later my source had them in the mail to me and I had their maps.

The maps did exist, and at that point I think their credibility went to zilch.

The public reaction to the withheld information was profound.

The incident was a catalyst for a long and winding political path.

Eventually through active concerned citizens and leaders, the area was designated as the Great Bear Wilderness in 1978.

For Smoke Elser it was a valuable lesson learned.

If you use it, and, and love it like I do, I think you want to have your voice in there.

And for that reason I've unfortunately put my name in a few places maybe that shouldn't have been but I still feel that, that in order to protect, true wilderness, you've got to get involved.

In that circumstance in 1969, Smoke, could have just said well wow, that might cause me some problems I just don't think I should do it.

So I think he asked himself that question, what's the right thing to do?

As Smoke went back to work, it was apparent that wilderness designation wouldn't solve all the problems.

He led more and more trips into the backcountry before he discovered the next problem might be even tougher to solve; because it was self-inflicted.

Early in my career we ran parties of, of 30 and 40 and up to 50 people.

They left areas that were decimated for years to come And the um, condition of the, of the wild areas the wilderness was, had changed.

And uh, I didn't like that.

The very agency they had just butted heads with would provide the push for needed change.

The Forest Service changed their management plan.

Users would no longer be allowed to take unlimited numbers of horses and mules on a trip.

At first it was hard to get used to hard for us to change.

Um, but in this case I think the Forest Service forced us into a change that was actually really good for the resource.

You know I don't think folks philosophically were opposed to trying some of these things I think we just have to remember how all of us approach change at different times.

Those changes and push for involvement were having an effect on Smoke.

He was a member of the Montana Wilderness Association, helped start a local chapter of the Backcountry Horsemen, and was a voice during land management debates.

Amid all the changes and conflict, Smoke found himself still standing in the same place.

Smoke and I have been friends over the years, we've agreed and disagreed on aspects of outfitting and the industry and, and some of the processes and procedures of that, but in the, in the nitty gritty of that, every time an issue of wilderness wildness and respect for that wild landscape has come up, to this day I have never seen a time where Smoke Elser didn't stand where he needed to stand on behalf of the wilderness.

That's great Gabby, now that's a mule over there.

Yeah, there are a lot of mules here.

Mack and Connie weren't the only ones traveling with Smoke.

In the summer of 2010, Lloyd Schermer was taking his family into the wilderness.

It had been 41-years since he hiked by that bulldozer in what would be the Great Bear Wilderness.

He asked one man to come out of retirement and help with the trip.

First we better see how tall she is, then we better see how wide she is.

We're the two elder statesmen.

That's right, we're a lot older than you guys.

Between the two of us we've got a hundred years of packing.

That's right, that's right.

He's got a few more than me, but I've got some with him.

We've got a hundred years, that's right.

Their lasting friendship was one of hundreds that Smoke formed through the connection of wilderness.

Over the course of fifty years he took more than 700-trips into the backcountry introducing literally thousands of people to a piece of the outdoors.

I think Smoke saw himself as somebody who could introduce other people to wilderness.

And that's what he spent his career doing.

Because he brought in people from the outside who didn't understand wilderness and introduced them to it.

And made them understand that this is a national resource.

Smoke has the ability for you to realize that humans are part of the landscape.

This is an important part of how we live on the planet.

We learn how to live in nature by going to places like wilderness.

Some guests were experienced hikers or packers, but many more were heading into the great outdoors for the very first time.

That's what happened in 1988 with Pat Bannister and his wife Bernadette.

She grew up in New Jersey as a self-described city girl.

Pat convinced her to go out west on a wilderness trip.

I wouldn't have thought that wilderness still existed here in the United States.

Something I had no concept of, not as a child or a teenager, you just didn't hear about the wilderness.

I didn't really know what to expect.

I traveled the world, but I had never really been to Montana, and uh, so I really didn't know what to expect.

They booked a summer trip with Smoke, and after their first night in camp they opened the tent flap, and discovered snow on the ground.

It created an unforgettable wilderness moment when they got an up-close view of an elk.

I mean I never saw anything like it before in my life, and this elk kept coming towards us and he was snorting you know moving his feet.

And I'd never seen elk, these were some of the biggest animals I'd ever seen.

I don't know how else to describe that other than incredible excitement but total fear.

But, but good fear, it's like oh my God.

I never met anybody who had such a strong ethic for the wilderness.

You felt like you were really important and you felt like he wanted you to understand what this was all about.

For the next twelve years in a row, Pat and Bernadette took trips into the backcountry wilderness with Smoke.

Their relationship with Smoke and Thelma has now stretched past two decades.

That's when I knew it was different, it wasn't just a client, it was growing into a relationship that was new to me, and different and became family.

When you share an experience, with somebody, and it clicks, that they become uh, heart and soul true friends, and honored friends.

It's just that there's so many people that strike deep into your heart and to your soul and Smoke and Thelma are those type of people, to us.

I mean people think you go into the outfitting business in part because you love the wilderness and you love horses and you're this rugged kind of individualist.

Well all of these things might be true of my dad, but the truth of the matter is he loves people as much as he love those other two things.

In fact I would suggest to you even more, and that love of people, interest in people is one of the things that I think is really key.

is one of the things that I think is really key.

is one of the things that I think is really key.

The desire is still there to go do it.

The desire is still there to go do it.

I think when he can't be riding in the Bob a lot of the light will go out of his eyes.

the light will go out of his eyes.

You know we talk about Smoke and his age and you know getting up there, but it's, it's, those first couple of trips are, all of us were a little bit stiff and sore.

One more, that's good.

This is for old people.

And especially for old crippled up packers.

And we're aboard.

I hate that idea that I have to find a log or a rock or something now to get on, geez that just gripes me something terrible, but once I get on, you know the, the outside of that horse makes the inside of me feel real good.

So I'm going to try and get on every time I can.

So I'm going to try and get on every time I can.

You know Connie, here's the old telephone line that runs right here.

This is a Forest Service telephone, and we've got a phone right up here in case you want to call your stock broker.

No really, it's for Forest Service use only, it's a historical phone line.

And it still works?

Yeah, it still works, yeah we'll stop up here and take a look at that old phone because it's really historical, it was put in in 1922.

And it's been maintained ever since then.

Here's the old phone, come on Arapaho, let's take a look at the old phone.

Little closer, that's good, you've to pull the pin, and then you've got to open it up like that and there's the old phone.

And all I've got to do is pick it up and listen and make the crank, and the old crank goes like that.

[ring] make the crank, and the old crank goes like that.

[ring] The group is heading home tomorrow, but Smoke has one more story to tell.

He used this as kind of a hideout, because he was kind of a wanted man, that is he ran in several outlaw gangs.

Long before any wilderness designation, Alfred P. Deneau built a cabin here, and his story is a great combination of truth and a little backcountry legend.

The man who also carried the nickname Smoke was born in 1875 of French and American Indian heritage.

While his cabin didn't survive, the one thing that started many a story is still here.

This was Smoke's law, not the right way to do things.

I remember some of the stories about him, him being a gunslinger from the Johnson-County wars, which I don't doubt it.

He had to kind of flee the country apparently and he came here to Montana and went back there on the north fork and built his little cabin.

Whether these stories are all true or not I don't know.

I think the storytelling end of it, yeah sometimes they might be exaggerated just a wee little bit.

The tallest tales sprang from the notches on his gun which supposedly stood for the men he killed.

But most folks in the area simply knew him as a gentle old man who kept to himself, searched nearby hills for gold and worked odd jobs for neighboring ranchers.

Whether he was an outlaw in hiding, or a just a man passing through, Smoke Deneau was another little known part of this backcountry.

Now the Forest Service has come and they built a new trail on the other side and they put a bridge here and they honored Smoke by calling it, Smoke's bridge.

Smoke Deneau is one of the stories of the Bob Marshall.

Outlaws, homesteaders, entrepreneurs.

To Smoke Elser these tales are a way to draw people closer to the wilderness.

The story is first of all is to entertain you, second of all, to connect you to, that day, that evening, that campfire.

that evening, that campfire.

that evening, that campfire.

And I think wilderness is a, a, it's an American concept by the way, you know no other place has it.

And it's given me well over 50-years of great pleasure in being able to share that with probably thousands of people.

He's not thinking about his legacy, he's thinking about the legacy of the Bob Marshall.

Will there be people like Smoke who can share the legacy with the next generation?

To whether he wants to admit it or not, that he got one incredible gift from Tom Edwards that he never talks about, and that is his heart's desire to himself be a teacher.

There is one part of Smoke Elser's life that spans even longer than his professional outfitting career.

He started back in 1964 at The University of Montana with a small group of students.

Les Pengelly took the original packing class.

His son Mark followed in his footsteps.

Now manti is a Spanish term that means to bundle or package.

Now a third generation of the Pengelly family is taking the class.

Granddaughter Jesse is learning the ropes and joining the thousands who have learned here.

He has influenced so many people.

He is a really great guy and he's taught my family so much and, I think it would be great to go on trips with him because he knows so much and you're always learning from him.

When Smoke tells stories, college students listen.

He represents an era of Americans... That's a good load, I'd take that into the south fork.

Folks that made a living out here, not being wealthy but having a greater wealth by being able to live in this landscape.

I can't get on that horse that's this big anymore.

And yet I have to have a pretty stout horse, because I weigh, a little over, well, I weigh plenty [class laughs], I didn't want to tell you exactly, you see.

He is just an absolutely charismatic teacher, he, first of all, he really really knows how to tell an instructive story.

She was headed back out to the trailhead and the hunter shot an elk.

So she had to load an elk and take it on out, by herself.

And narrative is a way that we understand the world, and my dad is just a master at telling the instructive story.

I saw a light bulb come on, I did!

Didn't you?

And I learned from them, you can do a whole lot more, than teaching the knots and how to throw a saddle on a horse or a mule, and how to get some stuff moved from point A to point B.

You can really teach a, an ethic, that incorporates wilderness, in your class.

that incorporates wilderness, in your class.

that incorporates wilderness, in your class.

Last call!

Last call!

I think maybe one of the best ways to describe it is you don't catch Smoke speechless very often, but that was one point that we did.

And that was my thought when I turned and looked at him doing that, was that he's trying to absorb as much of that as he could, because you know I could tell he was thinking am I going to get to come back here?

Well I know it's going to happen, first of all.

Second of all, a little piece of my life will disappear, as if I wasn't born at that time, I would just lose that.

Oh God look at that, he's saying good-bye.

I'm looking at my life, and it, those little pieces, if I'm not able to go back there, that's just another little chip off the rock that'll not come back.

that'll not come back.

I wish you wouldn't have asked me that question.

Let's get loaded up and get out of here before I get teary.

Production support for Three Miles and Hour was provided by The Greater Montana Foundation.

Encouraging communication on issues, trends and values of importance to Montanans.

And by the Montana Office of Tourism.